While no man can ride into metropolitan success on a hobby-horse, popular dissent will still take no stronger form than a quiet withdrawal and the permission to rock by himself. No amount of eccentricity surprises a New-Yorker, or makes him uncourteous. It is difficult to attract even a crowd of boys on Broadway by an odd figure, face, manner, or costume. This has the result of making New York an asylum for all who love their neighbor as themselves, but would a little rather not have him looking through the key-hole. In New York I share no dreadful secrets with the man next door. I am not in his power any more than if I lived in Philadelphia,—nor so much, for he might get somebody to spy me there. There is no other place but New York where my next-door neighbor never feels the slightest hesitation about cutting me dead, because he knows that on such conditions rests that broad individual liberty which is the glory of the citizen.
In fine, if we seek the capital of well-paid labor,—the capital of broad congenialities and infinite resources,—the capital of most widely diffused comfort, luxury, and taste,—the capital which to the eye of the plain businessman deserves to be the nation's senate-seat,—the capital which, as the man of forecast sees, must eventually be the world's Bourse and market-place,—in any case we turn and find our quest in the city of New York.
To-day, she might claim Jersey City, Hoboken, Brooklyn, and all the settled districts facing the island shore, with as good a grace as London includes her multitudinous districts on both sides of the Thames. Were all the population who live by her, and legitimately belong to her, now united with her, as some day they must be by absorption, New York would now contain more than 1,300,000 people. For this union New York need make no effort. The higher organization always controls and incorporates the lower.
The release of New York commerce from the last shackles of the Southern "long-paper" system, combined with the progressive restoration of its moral freedom from the dungeon of Southern political despotism, has left, for the first time since she was born, our metropolitan giantess unhampered. Let us throw away the poor results of our last decade! New York thought she was growing then; but the future has a stature for her which shall lift her up where she can see and summon all the nations.[E]
FOOTNOTES:
[E] In addition to the obligations elsewhere recognised, an acknowledgment is due to the well-known archæolgist and statistician of New York,—Mr. Valentine,—who furnished for the purpose of this article the latest edition of his Manual, in advance of its general publication, and to the great convenience of the writer.